“What we hear from our community partners is that our patients are really, really happy with our services,” says Kathy Gunkel, the assistant director of the FOCUS Wellness Center, a Newark nonprofit that has partnered with the FOCUS Hispanic Center for Community Development to form a nurse-managed clinic.

Photography:

John Emerson

On a cold, clear morning, a gusty wind whips around the entrance to the FOCUS Wellness Center in downtown Newark. There’s no parking on this stretch of Broad Street and not much foot traffic, either—just the endless whoosh of cars passing by. Walk inside, though, and the mood changes. Swirls of bright color envelop the walls, warming the light that pours through the uncurtained windows. Patients come here in hope, but are burdened with anxiety, too—many of them haven’t seen the inside of a doctor’s office in years—and the murals were created to make them feel welcome. They mark a collaboration between James Brittingham MGSA’12, then a graduate student at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, and a group of Newark schoolchildren—fitting because this is a center born of a partnership between Rutgers and the community it inhabits.

The center grew out of the conviction, held by William Holzemer, the dean of the College of Nursing, that a nurse-managed clinic would benefit the university and Newark’s underserved residents. To that end, he partnered with the FOCUS Hispanic Center for Community Development, a nonprofit that for more than four decades has worked to improve the quality of life for the city’s neediest. He hired Suzanne Willard, a nurse practitioner with a history of establishing AIDS clinics, to be the center’s director.

In July 2012, the wellness center opened its doors, providing medical and mental health care services and health education, with an emphasis on treating the whole patient. “We virtually provide one-stop shopping,” Willard says, citing the center’s full-time social worker from the School of Social Work and a student at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy who dispenses prescriptions. The International Institute for Peace is another partner, addressing social problems like bullying.

Today the center is flourishing, thanks largely to word of mouth. “What we hear from our community partners is that our patients are really, really happy with our services,” says Kathy Gunkel NUR’03, GSN’04, the center’s assistant director and mental health nurse practitioner. Willard notes that the center provides invaluable hands-on experience to students in the College of Nursing, but “the bottom line is our responsibility as a university to give back to the community that hosts us.”